Further discussion on how to utilise Slack. Should we use SlackIn to let people join without invitation? NSF ADC is offering to help establishing this. Check http://slack.dataone.org/ to see it in action.

Discussion and decisions

Concerning the discussion on the external website, it was decided that minutes of the group should be published in the website. The minutes are considered public after the subsequent meeting has reviewed and accepted the minutes. Minutes are linked directly from the Google Drive, but in order to avoid unintended editing documents are locked for editing prior to publishing them. Ruth Duerr will check how to do this.

Following the brief status update on collaboration tools, the discussion asked for a review of the various collaboration tools and identification of the primary purpose for each tool. In order to facilitate this a small document will be provided for the next meeting. This document will identify some use cases and tools an lead up to a discussion in the group on which tools to use for which purpose. David Baker will provide this document. The deadline is February 13th.

Ruth provided a status report. All her changes requested above have been applied. The discussion revealed that a question asking for information on the governance structure of the resource should be added. Potential approaches can be Non-profit, Project, Community, etc, other? Ruth Duerr will update the form in time for the next meeting when it will be discussed further.

Brief discussion on requirements for vocabulary management tools

Øystein informed that there are activities in the context of the WMO Global Cryosphere Watch developing a vocabulary for description of variables in the context of the WMO Integrated Global Observing System (WIGOS). This development engages a number of experts in the field and there have been a discussion on tools to simplify this work which currently is undertaken using spreadsheets. In order to engage the experts in the field, tools should be simple to use and provide a clear benefit over spreadsheets. Some initial high level requirements are:

Tracking of dialogue

Voting

Tracking of decisions

Import/export functionality (Interoperability)

Discussion and decisions

Before tools are listed and discussed, it is wise to start with use cases and a requirements document. There should not be focus on tools before the requirements are clear. Øystein Godøy will initiate a document that is structured hierarchically along two pillars, technology and business requirements. David Baker will help develop the document and Ruth Duerr will review.

David gave an update on activities. A working group has just started activities and would like the Polar Semantics community to ensure that the polar context is evaluated while reviewing terms. Ideally this would mean contribute to the review once or twice a year. David Baker will provide more background material (text for the agenda item and 1 page of background information) for the next meeting. Further discussion is postponed to the next meeting.

Outreach strategy

Deferred from last meeting

Postponed to February 20th meeting as the attendance during this meeting was too small.

Awareness updates (roundtable)

Ruth provided information on the work done on the WMO GCW glossary. The GCW glossary is essentially a compilation of terms from existing vocabularies. This implies that a number of terms have slightly inconsistent definitions. Øystein informed that this is a problem since the GCW glossary is used to define the vocabulary for cryosphere variables in WIGOS.

Ruth informed about the Glacier vocabulary hackathon February 2. If interested ask Ruth who will provide information. One week later there will be a debrief. Part of an ongoing series. Ruth will provide further information in slack.